What Do We Owe the State?

I’ve had a lot of response to my column on Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s new book Democracy – The God That Failed , most of it enthusiastic. [See the column of December 20, 2001, "The Myth of ‘Limited Government’."] A surprising number of citizens of this democracy have lost faith in the state, democratic or otherwise.

It’s amazing how seldom we ask the most basic questions. What is a state, anyway? Where does it get its authority? Might we be better off without it?

These are serious questions. One scholar estimates that during the twentieth century, states murdered about 177 million of their own subjects. And that doesn’t count foreigners killed in wars. In order to justify their own existence, states had better be doing someone a lot of good, or be able to show that in the absence of states, even more people would have been slaughtered. Neither proposition is credible.

"Wait a minute," someone will say. "You’re mixing apples and oranges. Sure, there are bad states, like the Soviet Union, which murder millions. But there are also good states, which don’t murder people and which protect their people from bad states."

Well, it’s possible that a mildly rapacious state may afford us some protection against a much worse one, just as one neighborhood gang may offer safety against another. But all states are rapacious, almost by definition.

What is a state? It is the ruling body in a territory, which claims a monopoly of the legal right to command obedience. It may demand anything – our earnings, our services, our lives. Once the right to command is conceded, there are no limits on its power.

Many people think a state is a natural necessity of social life. They can hardly conceive of society without the state.

This would be plausible if the state confined itself to enforcing natural moral obligations – that is, if it protected us from robbery, murder, and the like, otherwise leaving us alone. But what if the state itself robs and murders, claiming the authority to do so?

Any two men will usually agree that neither may justly take the other’s property or life. Nor does either owe the other obedience; that would be slavery. But somehow the state claims what no individual may claim – a right to the lives, property, and obedience of all within its power. The state asserts its "right" to do things that would be wrongs and crimes between private men. And most people accept this claim! They think they have a moral duty to obey power!

So why do people think they have this duty? Of course, as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued, the state ultimately rests on its power to kill (or otherwise harm) those who disobey it. But this is a threat, not a duty. If I demand your money at gunpoint, you will obey, but the gun doesn’t create an obligation, merely a menace.

But the state pretends that all its demands, however arbitrary, are moral obligations, even though those demands rest on force. If it were confined to demanding only what decent people do anyway – refraining from murder, robbery, et cetera – it might be bearable. But it never stops with reasonable moral demands; at a minimum, even the most "humane" and "democratic" states use the taxing power to extort staggering amounts of money from their subjects. The predatory tendency of the state is inherent and expansive, and nobody has found a way to control it. No control can long withstand the monopolistic "right" to demand obedience in every area of human activity the state may choose to invade. Systematized force – which is all the state really is – follows its own logic.

Legal forms, moral rhetoric, and propaganda may disguise force as something it is not. The idea of "democracy" has persuaded countless gullible people that they are somehow "consenting" when they are being coerced. The real triumph of the state occurs when its subjects refer to it as "we," like football fans talking about the home team. That is the delusion of "self-government." One might as well speak of "self-coercion" or "self-slavery."

No, the state, now grown to a monstrous magnitude, remains what Albert Jay Nock called it: "our enemy, the State." Maybe Professor Hoppe is dreaming. Maybe anarchism couldn’t be sustained. Maybe the evil of systematized force can never be eliminated in this fallen world. But why pretend such an evil is a positive good?

On the other hand, it may be time to face the fact that the system which apalls some of us IS a successful implementation of the Will of the People--rather than a dysfunctional corruption of first principles.

It's not something that too many people like to think about, but the far Left may be on to something when they claim that the Constitution was a document that could only apply to the Founders. That they carefully fashioned a system which would protect their way of life and reflect their mode of thinking. It's becoming more and more apparent that Aristotle was right--most humans prefer to grumble in slavery. Proof of that would be the fact that our Constitutional Republic barely outlasted Washington's term.

And alternative forms of authoritarianism have been the norm in human history. But, I know that the libertarian-minded break out into hives whenever the culture thing rears it's ugly head.....

Great article by Sobran.

Personally, I continue to be an advocate of a Constitutional amendment defining political redistribution of property as Capital Treason. Citizens could bring charges against individual politicians suspected of effecting deliberate redistribution of property; if convicted, the traditional penalty for horse-thieves is hanging.

Perhaps nobody has yet found a way to control the predatory nature of the state; but I think that defining deliberate redistribution of property by politicians as a form of Capital Treason would certainly be worth a try, in service of that goal.

The preamble to the Constitution states that "we, the people" ordain and establish said document. Yet the delegates were not the "people" but a group of men selected by the state legislatures. The state legislators were voted upon by an electorate that excluded slaves, women, and non-property holders. The framers of the Constitution wanted to "baptise" it in the name of the "people". It is incorrect to say the classes of people excluded from voting gave their consent. Nor did the anti-Federalists consent, and they were strong enough in numbers to impel the Federalists to incorporate the Bill of Rights into the Constitution.

As the numerous scandals of the Clinton years point out, not to mention the Enron collapse, there is no equality of treatment for all classes of the governed. The Federal government has had periodic scandals dating back at least to the Credit Mobilier issue in the Grant administration. Franklin Roosevelt liked to harangue the citizens about the "malefactors of great wealth," yet he was a member of a wealthy New York family, a former Wall Street stockbroker and lawyer who had no problem with wealthy men aligned with the Democrats.

Given fallen human nature, all governments will commit wrongful actions. A tripartite government, division of powers between the Federal government and the states, a bicameral legislature, an elected Chief Executive, and clear delineation of Federal powers, with the Tenth Amendment closing the door to further encroachment by the Feds, are measures the Framers of the Constitution desired to lessen the possibility of gross misuse of government power. They may have christened the ship of state in the name of the people, but they did not entrust the people with unbridled power.

"Is he entirely ignorant of the fact that we are a constitutional republic?"

No, but our elected officials (and, I dare say, most citizens) are ignorant of that fact. If they weren't, the 2nd and 10th Amendments would actually have some meaning.

"When government, the servant, acts outside of its Constitutionally defined realm of authority, whether it oppresses someone or not, it is the servant rebelling against its master and has earned any retribution we see fit."

What do you think of secession? The South tried it once and Lincoln sent 620,000 men to their deaths because of it. In my humble opinion, if the servant (the government) is indeed rebelling against the master (the citizenry), do we continue to take it or do we stage another revolution?

"Perhaps nobody has yet found a way to control the predatory nature of the state"

I think they have

When Revolution is the Only Answer

"A single good government becomes... a blessing to the whole earth, its welcome to the oppressed restraining within certain limits the measure of their oppressions. But should even this be counteracted by violence on the right of expatriation, the other branch of our example then presents itself for imitation: to rise on their rulers and do as we have done." --Thomas Jefferson to George Flower, 1817. ME 15:141

"We surely cannot deny to any nation that right whereon our own government is founded, that every one may govern itself according to whatever form it pleases and change these forms at its own will... The will of the nation is the only thing essential to be regarded." --Thomas Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 1792. ME 9:36

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776. ME 1:29, Papers 1:429

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. (*) ME 1:193, Papers 1:125

"When patience has begotten false estimates of its motives, when wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality." --Thomas Jefferson to M. deStael, 1807. ME 11:282

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." --Thomas Jefferson: his motto.

"If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:430

"The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:548

"As revolutionary instruments (when nothing but revolution will cure the evils of the State) [secret societies] are necessary and indispensable, and the right to use them is inalienable by the people." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1803. FE 8:256

"If the appeal to arms is made, it will depend entirely on the disposition of the army whether it issue in liberty or despotism." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, 1788.

"War... is not the most favorable moment for divesting the monarchy of power. On the contrary, it is the moment when the energy of a single hand shows itself in the most seducing form." --Thomas Jefferson to Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, 1788. ME 7:115

he should recognize that civil government is a divinely ordained institution ("the powers that be are ordained by God"; Romans 13), to which taxes are owed ("render unto Caesar"; Mark 12:14-17) and to whom obedience is normally due ("submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake"; I Peter 2:13).

The trouble with this passage is that, by this defination the United States should not even exist. The crown of England was the powers that be , ordained by God. Therefore our Christian founding fathers were being un-biblical in their rebellion. However, because they were, and now that the Constitution of the United States in the ruling power of our Republic, is it ordained by God? Or does God still recognize the crown of England as our rightful ruling power?

Nice rant. It's frustrating to think you're sovereign, yet live in a cage, isn't it? Rhetoric can't disguise the fact that though you thump your chest and declare your sovereignty, the State owns you.

I've thought about your last sentence for quite a while. It had been nagging me for years, a small fly buzzing in my ears "it doesn't matter, you are a slave. Your chains you may rattle, but they are chains nonetheless".

Then an epiphany hit me about a year ago. I noticed that when I acted in my normal affairs with others, I stopped giving the State any thought at all. I noticed that I "obey" the laws that reflect my natural inclination and ignore those that do not, as a matter of course. Not out of protest, like I used to in my "yoot", but out of apathetic disregard to the "new world's" authority.

I also noticed that I seem to have become an alien in a Bizarro world. I really, in all actuality and truth, feel no connection to most of the people in this nation whatsoever. My soul mates, those with whom I would have fit in, well most of them died a century ago. I almost feel like I and only a small handful of people from the Real America are wandering around the world of the Puppetmaster, unaffected by "his" directions, rants, or orders. I may protest certain horrible actions, from time to time, but I really do it out of habit more than anything else. Its a very strange feeling, this seperation.

Kind of like living in a dream world, with shadows of men. I just no longer see their validity, and quite frankly, could care less if they all disappeared tomorrow. Other than a few economic artifacts, their presence in my life is a cipher, a zero, a null variable. I do not wish any of these zero sums harm, I just simply do not recognize their existance nor do I heed their claimed "authority".

I'm not sure how this relates to the article, too much, but its a statement I think fits in with the intent of the article. Has anybody else noticed this in about the last 10-15 years? Or am I not explaining it correctly (which is quite possible, since it is such a bizarre concept).

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